Switch rods

Switch rods

Bernd Ziesche | Wednesday, 10 August 2016

Today there are many excellent single handed and double handed fly rods available. And then there are a lot of fly rods labeled to be a SWITCH rod available as well. I think it's time to switch BACK the hype for most of these fly rods!?

First of all - what are the characteristical parts I wouldn't want to miss in a single hand fly rod?

- A short handle: The handle should match the caster's rod hand and the rod hand only! A short fighting butt is fine, but please no more than just that.

- The overall rod length: A 10 feet fly rod is pretty long (and heavy), if I want to fish it several hours. 11 feet clearly limits me in how long I can fish it before I get exhausted. Everything longer than 11 feet is too long for a single handed fly rod and will come with too much of a swing weight and air resistance.

The double hand fly rod charactersistics are?

- A long upper handle: I want to be flexible (to some degree) where exactly to position my upper hand. For the lower handle I want it to be big enough to hold it with my lower hand. Thus the over all handle should be much bigger (and heavier) than the one of a single handed fly rod.

- The overall rod length: Since I will not be able to use the double haul anymore I want some extra rod length (compared to the single handed fly rod) in order to easily achieve the desired line speed.

Summarizing all the above means the perfect SWITCH fly rod - a rod that allows me to switch back and forth between single handed and double handed fly fishing - should come with:

- A handle that can be adjusted to match both a single handed and a double handed fly rod. Just one and the same handle doesn't fullfit the desire of both ways to fly fish in my experience.

- An overall rod length no shorter than 10 feet and no longer than 11 feet.

The truth of todays fly rod market?

There are a lot of double handed fly rods, which are sold as switch rods based on the hype that was built up around switch rods - pure marketing strategy. These rods are simply too long to be fished single handed and thus are double handed rods and double handed rods only.Simply very few SWITCH fly rods on the market today come in proper rod length and with a handle offering me to adjust it when switching back and forth between single handed and double handed fly fishing.

Maybe it's time to switch back the hype around switch rods?

Obviously this is only my experience. If you have a different one - I am all ears to listen to it! ;)